They say those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it and maybe that’s why we are able to stay ahead of the game. Yesterday we became concerned that Obama’s prediction of strong jobs numbers on Wednesday were already baked into the 200-point rally they sparked so I called an end to "short-term, unhedged, upside plays" in Member Chat at 10:04 and we added an aggressive upside play on BGZ that is designed to pay 1,000% if the market falls. We also got more aggressively bearish on our Mattress Plays so to say we’re not expecting a big push on the jobs number is an understatement.

What did the world witness in the past several decades if not powerful corporate and private wealth forces combining their political influence to distort the laws that keep markets prudently free! What did we see if not a revelation that markets are not "free" when laws tumble down and the wicked use markets as instruments of exploitation? Indeed, we learned that without constitutional guidance to require good conduct in capital markets, grievous excesses will develop -- excesses that hazard the common good.

The result of these hazards is regulatory interventions and inefficiencies. Before long, the interventions morph into bureaucratic usurpations and a long march toward police state bondage. This concern is supported by the fact that in the first quarter of 2010 the private sector generated just 42% of the nation’s personal income.

The problem is, alas, that no one — not investors, not regulators, not even bankers themselves — knows exactly which banks are sitting on the biggest stockpiles of rotting loans within that pile. And doubt, as it always does during economic crises, has made Europe’s already vulnerable financial system occasionally appear to seize up. Early last month, in an indication of just how dangerous the situation had become, European banks — which appear to hold more than half of that $2.6 trillion in debt — nearly stopped lending money to one another.

The marketplace knows very little about where the real risks are parked,” says Nicolas Véron, an economist at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels. “That is exactly the problem. As long as there is no semblance of clarity, trust will not return to the banking system.

Energy

The elements are indispensable to a range of green energy and high-tech components such as wind turbines, low-energy light bulbs, batteries for hybrid and electric cars, lasers, fiber-optic cables and cell phones. Each Toyota Prius, for example, uses 25 pounds of rare earth elements. The elements also used for military applications, such as missiles.

Every year the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) which is part of the Energy Department puts out an influential report called the Global Energy Outlook. This is a projection of global energy production and energy consumption.

According to the 2010 version of this document energy consumption will grow by 49% between 2007 and 2035. At the same time EIA predicts that oil production will only increase by less than 1% between 2010 and 2020. In other words the oil supply isn’t keeping up with the demand for energy. If this is true Peak Oil is apparently here folks."

An EU memo has called on the 27 member states to "provide the additional resources necessary" for the project, just as these nations are desperately trying to cut their own domestic budgets. "I think the momentum of the project may be in very deep trouble," one Iter scientist told the journal Nature last week. "Time is pressing."

As oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico on a recent Saturday, Jennifer Wilkerson spent three hours on the phone talking about life after petroleum. For Mrs. Wilkerson, 33, a moderate Democrat from Oakton, Va., who designs computer interfaces, the spill reinforced what she had been obsessing over for more than a year — that oil use was outstripping the world’s supply. She worried about what would come after: maybe food shortages, a collapse of the economy, a breakdown of civil order. Her call was part of a telephone course about how to live through it all.

Environment

BP Senior Vice President Bob Fryar said the company funneled about 250,000 gallons of oil in the first 24 hours from a containment cap installed on the well to a drilling ship on the ocean surface. "That operation has gone extremely well," Fryar said at an Alabama news conference. "We are very pleased."

That's about 31 percent of the 798,000 gallons of crude federal authorities estimate is gushing into the sea every day."

BP started drilling its first relief well May 2. It has reached 12,090 feet and is expected to reach the blown-out well in early August. The second was started May 16, has reached 8,576 feet and is expected to reach the well in mid-August. The relief well drilling will continue even if the cap attached to the spewing pipe on Friday is successful.

If the first relief well is completed by early August, the total spill by then could be 72 million gallons -- using government figures for the daily spill rate -- or as much as 265 million, under scientists' estimates.

I'm mostly feeling this is Iran playing to the crowd for PR gains, and making the offer expecting that the situation will be resolved before it gets to that. But if they ARE serious... that's some serious provocation to be moving warships (even if they're smaller ships) near a very suspicious nation's waters.